Today: Move over lettuce, there's a new salad green in town.
Salad, we love you. But salad, sometimes ol' lettuce doesn't make the cut. We want something just as green, but with lots of texture, a whisper of garlic, salty Parmesan, and a generous amount of lemony-olive oil dressing. In other words, we want this chard salad and we want it now.
If you have a baguette lying around, watch Amanda show you how to make breadcrumbs. If not, buy some breadcrumbs with sizeable nuggets of crumbs—not any of that grainy stuff. Sorry, lettuce, we don't mean to be mean, but this chard salad's supreme.
Grocery List
(Organized by area of the market)
Serves 4, as a starter
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 lemon
3/4 cup grated Parmesan
1 1/2 cups fresh breadcrumbs
We are assuming you already extra virgin olive oil, salt, and garlic. If not, add those to your list, too!
With 20 minutes before dinner, wash and dry the chard and set aside. Grab that lemon and zest and juice it—you'll need about 2 1/2 tablespoons of juice.
Combine the lemon juice with 1 teaspoon lemon zest and a pinch of salt. Slowly whisk in 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil and set aside. Take the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil and warm it in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the breadcrumbs and stir, frequently, until they're golden brown and crisp like all breadcrumbs should be. Stir in the garlic, let it get toasty for another minute, and then remove from heat.
Seperate the chard's leaves from their stems and finely chop the stems. Stack a few leaves atop one another, roll them like a cigar, and cut the cigar into thin 1/8-inch ribbons. Repeat the stacking, rolling, and cutting until all the leaves are shredded.
Put the chard stems and leaves in a bowl and toss gently with the Parmesan and two thirds of the lemon dressing. Taste, then add more dressing if you'd like. Toss in the breadcrumbs and serve immediately—we don't want sad, soggy breadcrumbs here. Lettuce gather, dinner is served!
Photo by James Ransom
Written by: Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm
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8 Comments
Here in September, we are way outside the ideal harvest dates for chard. Plus, young chard is more suitable for salads. Older, mature plants tend to be more bitter; the bitterness diminishes when the chard is cooked.
See what other Food52 readers are saying.